Kids Lesson Plan or Book Club Questions - 2007

A Street Through Time

by Anne Millard

All Ages

About the Book

Beginning in the year 10,000 B.C., in a Stone Age hunters' camp, the book reveals how its riverfront location is key to the site's development. This primitive camp is the germ of the modern, bustling, big-city street viewed in the final pages.

The pages between provide panoramic images of this same street with the changes of the era.

The view from the Iron Age of 600 B.C. makes clear the impact of iron tools and weapons, and the next page jumps to A.D. 100 when the Roman influence means large stone buildings, a bridge, and an elaborate lifestyle. The medieval centuries are depicted in the 1200s; with increased prosperity in the 1400s; and eerily painful in the 1500s, the era of the Black Plague.

Look for detail in the elaborately illustrated pictures themselves, and the border text which provides detail about the era. Keen eyes should also look for Where's Waldotype people who populate the text and are begging to be found.

Memory Activity

Read the book as a group. Instruct each child to then draw a single drawing for each time span in the book. Ask each child to include any details he or she remembers. Provide brief timeline descriptions if a child so needs it. As a group, arrange the pictures in the correct timeline order and post, if possible.

Happy time travel to you!